American Artist Margaret Gohn creates intense paintings - both immersed in nature and using natural elements.

Statement

It can be an intense experience to paint in the rain and in changing conditions - with the natural elements. Studio painting allows for a more layered approach. I create - with a mixture of oil paint, wax and various types of sand - thick, tactile, colorful paintings based on nature and interrelationships.

Philosophically, I work with the elements of life and myth - human existence in the context of history and nature. I am interested in how we explain life to ourselves. I absorb influences from past and present, from Eastern and Western sources - especially from Northern Europe & France, the Song Dynasty in China, and Japanese Sumi-e ink painting. Current artists I find inspiring include Anselm Kiefer & Barry Gealt (who also lives in Owen County, Indiana - a retired IU professor).

For my Thesis work, I studied art and mythology worldwide related to snakes. Snake symbolism is present on nearly every continent, and in most ancient cultures. The snake as symbol has been found in artifacts and carvings going back 70,000 years. Snakes were easily imagined to be circling in the night sky and are associated with the first known constellation descriptions. Snakes are in many creation myths - as a positive force. To me snakes primarily represent the wildness of nature and a mostly lost spiritual heritage that connected people with the wonderfulness (and sometimes the tragedies) of life.

Recently I have been creating paintings of birds, with the birds painted as silhouettes (with a hint of modernism), shown against skies with jet vapor trails. The birds are on their own (flat) plane - the sky is separate. I like the relationship of people flying and the lines created in the atmosphere by airplanes, and that of flocks of birds and their flight paths. In flocking, by people and by birds, there is as aspect of connectedness. There is also the wonder of where everyone is going. And there is the aspect of civilization itself - drawing lines upon the sky - of leaving a mark, that turns into clouds, and residue.